The present study was carried out at the experimental farm of the Rice
Research and Training Center (RRTC)., Sakha, kafrelsheikh, during 2014 and
2015 rice growing seasons to study the inheritance of some quantitative
characters using a half diallel cross among eight rice parental genotypes
namely; Sakha 102, Giza 179, Sakha 105, Sakha 106, GZ 8710, GZ 1368,
Wab 56 and IET 1444. The parents and their F1 crosses were evaluated under
normal and stress irrigation. Days to heading, plant height, flag leaf Area,
chlorophyll content, relative water content, panicle length, number of
panicles/plant, 100-kernel weight, sterility percentage and grain yield/plant
were estimated. Highly significant mean squares were obtained for genotypes,
parents and their crosses in all studied characters. The interactions of
genotypes, parents and crosses with environments (irrigation) were detected
to be highly significant for studied traits. Mean squares of general combining
ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) and the interaction between
environment and each of GCA and SCA were highly significant for all studied
characters, indicating the importance of additive and non-additive genetic
variances in determining the performance of these characters. The parental
genotypes; Giza 179 and GZ 8710 were good combiners for panicles
numbers/plant, 100-grain weight, sterility percentage and grain yield / plant.
The crosses; (GZ 1368 × IET 1444), (Giza 179 × GZ 8710), (Sakha 102 × IET
1444) and (Giza 179 × Sakha 106) were superior on the basis of specific
combining ability effect.